Representations and Behavior – How Representations Direct the Actions We Take
As information is always something that has a value in the sense that there cannot be any content free information in order for it to be information, we also adjust our behavior and behave in relations with the values that are emerging information from the sub-conscious has. In other words, when the content of information, given through conscious valuations and by the sub-consciousness causes behavior, it is in relativity with the given content, including when we willingly choose freely not to do something. Of course, by this definition, the information-relative behavior includes the value systems.
If for example a person perceives a red light when he is about to cross the street, because of value-relative behavior, he stops and waits for the green light. If for example a law has set to walk on the left side of the street in relations to the direction one is headed, if one adjusts his behavior so that he walks in the left side of the street, it is because of information-relative behavior. If for example the value system has values concerning being polite, when one adjusts his behavior in accordance with such values, it is information-relative behavior. If for example a person perceives a smile in another persons face and responds by smiling, it is information-relative behavior. If for example a person adjusts his/her behavior in relations to Christian values, it is information-relative behavior. In short, if you consider that values in the value systems such as the ethics belonging or conducted from the Universal Human Rights, it is in accordance with them the behavior is adjusted with.
Now, a phenomenon does not need to have a physical manifestation in physical level to affect behavior. As a representation is inevitably a part of the sense of reality one exists in, they can cause behavioral adjustments. One might enjoy his time in relations with fantasies by visualizing phenomena such as new age religious energy giving beings of light, and one feels of being connected with them, it can cause such physical responses as feeling more energetic. Another might in the same time and place visualize an infinite space around him, being in the constant middle of everlasting time and feel the sensations caused by them, and as in the mean time another lives with the psychological aspects of the reality observing their behavior as psychological phenomena. In a more daily example when one listens to music, a representation of an angry neighbor might appear to consciousness and one shifts the music to lower setting because of information-relative behavior, even as the angry neighbor were not in the same country. This is also something that is related to the fear of God or conscience, and the consequences of these phenomena aren’t hard to perceive. Such a representational phenomenon as God that has the quality of valuating people through the actions they take, causes with certainty effects to the behavior in accordance with values of what is good, and when for example a number of thousand people alter their behavior similarly, it causes an inevitable mass behavior however sparsely separated the individuals are from each other.
Henry M. Piironen is a contemporary philosopher and a humanist who considers religious values to be universal and invaluable for generations of ethical development. He has also studied closely the representational sense of reality, human brain anatomy, complex adaptive systems, memetics, existentialism and is the creator of the philosophy of cultural continuums, published for free through EzineArticles.com. To learn the universal and deeply rooted wisdom from 1361 quotations, collected from Buddhism: The Dhammapada, The Diamond Sutra, The Lankavatara Sutra; Christianity: The New Testament; Confucianism: Confucian Analects, The Doctrine of the Mean, The Great Learning; Hinduism: The Bhagavad Gita; Taoism: Tao Te Ching, purchase his latest book Divinity the Amazon bookstore now.